The Covid-Con violated the Constitution, our rights and severely restricted our freedom. The encroachment upon and erosion of our freedoms had been occurring for decades with rarely a peep.
During Covid, most citizens remained passive complying like sheep to the slaughter. Our local guardians – county supervisors and city council members acquiesced due to ignorance, stupidity and bribes. They yielded their authority to a medical dictatorship and sacrificed their constituents for gain.
However, there never has been a time in America where freedom ruled supreme without vigilance and a fight. Covid revealed that few Americans see a reason to fight for their way of life. Sadly, they are lost, not understanding where they are, where they came from, or where they are going.
Some might conclude that the early European sojourners came seeking political and religious freedom and birthed such a society. However, their charters often established colonial or “state” religions versus freedom for all flavors of faith.
Remember the first settlers arrived 150 years or so before the Declaration of Independence, Bill of Rights, and the U.S. Constitution. And, these documents essentially outlined the ideal society and the means to attain it if an imperfect people were willing.
In 1650, the Obadiah Holmes family, Baptists (and not believing in infant baptism), settled in Salem, Massachusetts, a Puritan-led colony to start a glass making business. However, the Puritans considered Holmes to be promoting heresy. Besides doctrinal differences, he did not have a license to preach. So, the Holmes family moved to Newport, Rhode Island for more religious freedom.
In 1651, Holmes, John Clarke and John Crandall visited a fellow Baptist man living outside Boston in Lynn. While having a religious meeting in the home the police arrived arresting the three. A court found them guilty of a half-dozen “religious” crimes.
The magistrate fined John Clarke 20 pounds, John Crandall 5 pounds and Obadiah Holmes 30 pounds. Friends of Clarke and Crandall paid their fines. Holmes refused to let them pay his. The judge concluded Holmes should be whipped. Holmes waited in jail for 5 weeks for his punishment.
Holmes was tied to a post and lashed 30 times, once for each pound he refused to pay. “Those who have seen the scars on Mr. Holmes’ back (which the old man was wont to call the marks of the Lord Jesus), have expressed a wonder that he should live,” wrote Joseph Jenckes, Rhode Island governor.
After Obadiah Holmes recovered, he returned to Newport where family and friends welcomed him four miles outside the town. The next year, he became pastor of the Newport Church, the second Baptist church in America. He held the position for 30-years until his death October 15, 1682.
News spread fast and far about the savage whipping and the persecution of the Baptists in Massachusetts. In the end it resulted in more, not less, religious freedom. The whipping of Obadiah Holmes also had the unintended consequence of helping to preserve Rhode Island’s independence.
At the time, the dissenters of Rhode Island felt very much persecuted by Connecticut and Massachusetts. The two colonies sought to divide Rhode Island and absorb it. Rhode Island needed a royal charter to survive.
John Clarke spent a decade in England as an agent for the colony of Rhode Island. When King Charles II was restored to the throne in 1660, Clarke lobbied him for a charter. He found a sympathetic ear, since Charles had little use for Puritans. They had beheaded his father.
Clarke drafted the Rhode Island Royal Charter and Charles approved it in July 1663. The charter granted unprecedented religious freedom in Rhode Island and remained in effect for 180 years. The government’s abuse of Obadiah Holmes incensed reasonable people even among the Puritans and led to more religious freedom and the preserving of Rhode Island as a colony and future state.
During Covid, those who suffered government persecution for keeping their businesses and churches open, and those who defied unconstitutional mandates and removed their children from abusive government schools deserve our admiration and gratitude. They have the DNA of our Founding Fathers.
Obadiah Holmes left a legacy. He had a “restless soul, a pugnacious spirit, a hot temper and a tendency to find fault.” He was a natural debater. As a boy, he rebelled against his religious parents. “I minded nothing but folly, and vanity,” he wrote. Then when his mother died, he blamed himself and changed his ways.
His great-great-great-great-great-grandson had Obadiah’s backbone, tenacity and oratory skills. In 1861, Abraham Lincoln became the 16th President of the United States.
(Lou Binninger can be heard on No Hostages Radio podcast, live on KMYC 1410AM 10-1 Saturdays, read at Live with Lou on Facebook and at Nohostagesradio.com)
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